The Transmission of the Sin Nature

Last week we just barely touched on and began the next part of our study on what the Bible teaches about sin. That is the transmission of the sin nature. And the idea there is, okay, Adam sinned and it had terrible consequences for both him and even, and also all human beings and even all of creation. But more specifically, how did it affect us? How did we get our sin nature? And really the question we're considering now is, what happened with Adam? How is that transmitted then to the rest of us? How did we get our sin nature? And there are various views of that, various views as to how Adam's sin affected us. That's what we're going to talk about tonight. But let's look at the passage that we ended with last week in Romans chapter 5. So if you'll open your Bible to Romans 5, not going to do an exposition of that, the verse by verse explanation, an application of that passage. There's a place for that, certainly I've done that, I've preached through the book of Romans and dealt with this passage in some depth. But what we want to do tonight is just read the passage, note the fact that it talks about how Adam sin affected us and by way of comparison and contrast, how Christ's death remedies that, how Christ's death also affects those who believe. So that's the comparison and contrast in the passage. And then what we're going to do is going to do a little bit of study of systematic theology. We're going to just talk about the different ways people try to explain how Adam's sin affected us. Romans 5 states it clearly, but then to think a little bit deeper about, well just how did that happen? How does Adam's sin get passed down to us? How did it affect us or did it affect us at all? That's the question we're going to try to grapple with tonight. But let's begin just by reading these verses, Romans 5, verse 12. Therefore just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin and in this way, death came to all people because all sinned. Okay, that's a statement of how Adam sin affected us. The one man obviously is Adam and sin entered the world in Genesis 3 through Adam's sin in the Garden of Eden. So that's how sin entered the world. And death as we saw, one of the consequences of Adam sin, death came through that sin. And then he makes the transition to how that affected all people. Because of sin entering the human race through one man and death become the consequence of that. Well, that death has passed down to all people. All of us are somehow included in what happened to Adam and the judgment that comes because of what happened to Adam. So that's kind of an overall general statement. And then he talks a little bit about the nature of sin in verses 13 and 14. But look at verse 15, where he begins this contrast and comparison between what sin did to us and what Christ did for us. He says, but the gift, that's the gift of salvation through Christ. The gift is not like the trespass for if the many died by the trespass of the one man. Now notice the connection there. The trespass of the one man's Adam, but his sin affected us so that many die. And the many there is not just some it's talking about talking about the human race as a whole, but the contrast between one and many. One man affected many, many, many people, the human race, the whole human race. And so that's the connection there. He says, if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ overflow to the many? Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man's sin. Here's one of the contrasts. The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. So there's contrast there between the one sin and the many sins that are covered through the death of Christ. Verse 17, for if by the trespass of the one man that's Adam again, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who received God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ? And there in verse 17, he stresses the importance of receiving notice the emphasis on receiving the gift that God's given us through Christ. It's not that Christ's death automatically saves everybody. One must receive that provision. That's a key element of this whole passage. But now look at verse 18, consequently just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people. Again, Adam's one sin brought condemnation on the whole human race in the same way. So also the righteous act resulted that's righteous act of Christ resulted in justification in life for all people. Verse 19, for just as through the disobedience of the one man and here's the key phrase, the many were made sinners. So also through the obedience of the one man, the many will be made righteous. Okay, the key thought for us, we're not going to try to dissect all of those statements. But the key for us is that concept, especially tied together in verses 12 and 19. Verse 12, Adam's sin brought death to the whole human race, came to all people. So it affected us all. But it also made us all sinners. Now, the question we're dealing with is how does Adam's transgression get passed down to us? How does that happen? In other words, how do we get our sin nature and is it in any way tied to what Adam did? And trying to explain that and trying to think it through and explain how that happens, there are four different views. And we're going to talk about the first three, hopefully tonight. The first one is what's called the Pelagian view. And it's therefore on your notes. So you don't have to spell that one out. Pelagian view. Now, why is it called that? Well, let me give an explanation first of all of what the Pelagian view is. It's named after a man called Pelagius. Okay, you might guess. Pelagius was a British monk in the 400s, late 300s and 400s whose views were condemned by the council of Ephesus in 431 A.D. Now, let me stop right there and explain just a little bit. In the early church, when there would arise doctrinal disputes, someone would start teaching something that other people recognize. And wait a second, that doesn't sound right. That doesn't seem like that's really biblical. What they would do oftentimes, it might be a pastor or another leader teacher in a Bible college of sorts that would be teaching a particular view. And other pastors or church leaders would convene what was called a council. It was basically a meeting of church leaders, pastors and others who were church leaders in the day. And they would consider the different views that were being taught and try to reconcile them with the Bible. And in this case, in the council of Ephesus in 431, they condemned the views of Pelagius. You say, well, what did he teach? Well, here we go. Basically, Pelagius taught this. Adam's sin affected only himself directly. In other words, Pelagius taught Adam's sin really didn't affect us at all. The only way that it might be seen as affecting us is it provided a bad example. But there's really in Pelagius' view, there's no connection between Adam's sin and us. Now you say, okay, what's so bad about that? Well, think it through. Here's basically what that meant. It meant that all of us come into this world innocent. So if Adam's sin had nothing to do with us and did not affect us in any way, Pelagius taught we all come into this world innocent. We don't have a sin nature. We're not corrupted by sin when we come into this world because Adam's sin didn't affect us at all. You see how dangerous this is getting? This is heading a bad place. Basically, what Pelagius went on to teach is that since we are born innocent, we have the ability to remain that way. In fact, Pelagius actually taught that there were some heathen people who had never knew anything about the Bible, worshiped false gods and so forth. There were heathen and some Jews that had lived perfect lives that remained innocent all of their lives. Now it's easy to come to that conclusion if you start with the idea that we're not all sinners to start with. You see, and Pelagius started with the idea that we're all innocent to start with. We're not born with any taint of sin. We're not born with a sin nature. We're all innocent. Now, basically, that means because we are not depraved, we're not sinful from the beginning. It means that we are totally free and can of our own free will choose to remain innocent and obey God and basically work our way to heaven. That's the problem with this view. Because there is no inherent sinfulness in this view, then theoretically at least a person might be able to remain innocent and be good enough to get themselves into heaven. So it basically led to a teaching about salvation that salvation was by works. That's very, very dangerous. So what started, like an idea that might not have sounded too bad, that Adam's sin only affected himself, once you think through what all that means, it gets into some pretty bad stuff. Any questions about what that Pelagian view is? What Pelagius taught? Any question about that? Randall? No. Because you had eight people on the ark who were still sinners. And when they got off the ark, they carried their sin nature with them and they bred a whole bunch of other sinners. Okay? All right, good. Good. So even though God judged planet Earth because of the rampant sinfulness and wickedness, Noah and his sons and their wives were still sinners. And so when they got off the ark, everybody that was born continued to be sinners. Okay? Steve? Well, almost. Pelagius taught that we were born innocent, but we might choose to sin. And most people do, he taught. Most people do choose to sin. He would have seen that Christ did not sin was sinless whereas we were born innocent and we choose to sin. In fact, Pelagius did teach that people become depraved when they sin. They're not born that way, but they become depraved when they sin. So he would have seen a difference between man's innocence and Christ's sinlessness. I guess you could say, I don't know that Pelagius would have said that, but I guess logically that makes sense. Basically, the problem here is that man is able to work his own way to heaven. If he's good enough, if he stays innocent, that's the problem. And the root of the problem is the fact that we're not born with a sin nature. That's the root of the problem. Now, here's the refutation to that. Here's the real argument against this view. It plainly is contradicted by scripture. Let's review some of the scriptures that we've already seen. Most of them will put on the screen for you. Psalm 51.5. Surely I was sinful at birth. And then it's almost like David says, no, no, no, wait a second. Let's go back before that. I'm not that sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Okay. So the Bible teaches not only where we born with a sin nature, from the moment we were conceived, we had a sin nature. Now, that's going to become very important a little bit later on when we talk about, I think what is the most biblical view of how we got our sin nature. But certainly that's not what Pelagius taught. He taught that we're born innocent. David said, God said, not only was I born sinful, I had a sin nature from the moment I was conceived. Okay. Another passage, Jeremiah 17, nine. The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure, who can understand it. So Pelagius would say, we're born innocent. Jeremiah says, your heart, the real you on the inside is deceitful and wicked. It's beyond cure. It's not just that you have the potential to make bad choices. No, no, your heart is at its core deceitful and beyond cure or wicked. So that's the clear biblical position. And then Ephesians 2, 3, all of us also lived among them at one time, talking about sinners in the world, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts like the rest. And in the last few days, we were by nature, deserving of wrath. Okay, by nature means that our nature, our human nature, what we're born with is already corrupted. We're deserving of God's wrath by nature. So all three of those passages clearly violate what this man named Pelagius taught. Let me read one other. I didn't put it on the screen because it's a little more extended. Verse 7, verse 20, Jesus went on to say, what comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within out of a person's heart that evil thoughts come sexual immorality theft murder adultery greed malice deceit, looting envy slander arrogance and folly all these evils come from inside and defile a person. So what Pelagius would teach is no, though the inside is innocent. If you choose to do something wrong, then that corrupt your nature. Jesus said, it's exactly the opposite. You've got to corrupt nature on the inside. Your heart is defiled and that's where the evil actions come from. That's what causes us to do evil things. So obviously what Pelagius taught doesn't stand up to scriptural scrutiny. It just doesn't fit what the Bible teaches. So that view we can kind of put an X on that's not the right answer. What about another view? Yes, Vicki? Yes. He ministered in the late 300's, 400's. The whole Bible was put together by then. Yeah, all the books of the Bible were together and it already been translated into several languages. But to us it's amazing that anybody could read the Bible and say this, obviously I'm simplifying what Pelagius would have taught. False doctrine and false teachers have an uncanny way of winding thinking around to where it all sounds right. It sounds good. But it obviously doesn't take some passages very seriously and that was his problem. To be honest, I do not remember. I mean he would have been branded a heretic but he would have gone on teaching had a following just like false teachers do today. No, no, there wasn't there wasn't anything like that going on by the established church at this time. Now there were people being killed by the Roman Empire but not by the church. Actually that didn't really start happening until the Roman Catholic church came to the forefront. So that was a Pelagian view. The next view is kind of a spin-off of that and it's called the semi-Polagian view. Now I don't need to explain a whole lot about this but let me give you an explanation. It's similar to the Pelagian view in this where it says depravity is not inherited. In other words, Adam Sin did not directly affect us but the semi-Polagian view, those who said Pelagius has gone too far, maybe we can soften it a little bit. What they taught was that we do have a natural inability or a natural weakness. Every person is born with that. You see Pelagius would say we're born with a clean slate, we're totally innocent and these folks would say, nah that's going a little too far. We do have an inherent natural inability or weakness but they said since it's just a weakness that doesn't mean we're guilty before God. In fact God created us that way so God has obligated to help us overcome that weakness and He does they said God exerts enough influence on us so that we can overcome our weakness. Now that's what they called God's grace. That's a very weak view of grace isn't it and it's a very weak view of man. Basically it's that man just has a weakness or inability that he needs to overcome and God will kind of help him do that. This really became a mixture of works and grace for salvation. God needs to help you but you can do a lot of it on your own. That's kind of the idea. By the way Pelagianism and semi-Polagianism is basically the foundation behind every religious system that calls itself Christian that basically says you contribute something to your salvation. Anything that says you're not completely depraved you're not totally sinful and need the pure grace of God and you can't do anything to save yourself. These views would not say that they would say basically you're just a little weak unable to really get to have him totally on your own so you need a little help from God and a little push from God but it's a very distorted view of grace and of man's simpleness. Well the refutation to that view is basically the same as what we've already seen. It basically denies the impact of Adam sin on us. It denies the impact of the fall. Basically this view says well we only sin because we're of a weakness. Adam sin basically was his weakness. We all sin maybe because of our own weaknesses but we can overcome that with a little help from God we can overcome that. And so it denies any real spiritual connection to Adam that devastates us and throws us totally on the grace of God. It is a very inadequate view of both man and grace and thus is a totally unscriptural view on salvation because salvation is not me cooperating with God to overcome my weakness. That's not salvation needing a little nudge little help from God to overcome my weak tendencies. Now that's not salvation that's self-help type stuff. That's just that's cultural fad kind of salvation. Whether some names I want to mention right now almost did. I'll go ahead and do it anyway. That's Dr. Phil salvation. That's Oprah salvation. That's nothing to do with the Bible. The Bible does not teach that we're just kind of weak and we have these tendencies. We need a little help from God but we can really do it on our own. The Bible does not teach that at all. Now let me summarize these first two views this way. Pelagianism says we are alive and well. That's how we come into the world. Symi Pelagianism says we are alive and sick. You know what the Bible says? We are dead and depraved. That's what the Bible teaches. So both of these views and by depraved I'm simply talking about that we are born with a sinful nature. So both of these views are unbiblical. We have to throw them out. Neither one of them measures up to anything close to what the Bible teaches. So most well all evangelical theologians and by that I mean evangelical is a way to describe people who believe the Bible is the word of God and base what they believe on the Bible. Okay that's just kind of a broad term to describe Bible believing Christians and that's the way theologians use that word evangelical. So evangelical theologians or biblical teachers generally choose one of the next two views. We're only going to get probably a chance to look at one of them tonight. But let me just briefly describe both of them. The first one is the representative headship view. And let me just briefly explain it. It basically says that Adam was the head of the human race that represented us when he fell God attributed his fall and his sin to each of us. He reckoned or counted his sin as our sin. Okay that's a representative headship view. The other view is what is called the seminal headship view or realistic view headship view. And basically that is a little different. It also has a strong view on the fact that Adam sin affected us totally. But it basically says this that Adam's Adam sin affected us in the sense that his corrupted depraved nature was actually passed down to his children and has been to every other human being since then. So that we inherited a sin nature from Adam. Okay the representative headship view basically says Adam sinned and God just basically imputed or reckoned his sin to the whole human race. Just de facto the whole human race is now sinful. The seminal headship view basically says we inherited it. We inherited our sin nature from Adam and down through the generations. I inherited my sin nature from my parents. Okay just like I inherited everything else. So we're going to take a look at those two views. The first one tonight, the next one, the last one. Probably next week. Okay representative headship view, an explanation is this. I won't bother to give you leading teachers leading theologians of it. That wouldn't mean a whole lot to most of you. If you're really interested, if you're really into theology and you like to read different writers. Let me know afterwards and we'll talk about that. But the representative headship view basically teaches this it teaches that God made a covenant with Adam. And the covenant with Adam went something like this. Adam you are appointed to represent the human race. If you don't sin, then you've represented human race. The whole human race stays sinless. But if you fail as the representative of the human race, then I will automatically attribute your fall to everybody else in the human race. And everybody else will be counted in my site as sinners. So basically it means that God imputes to us or reckons to us. Adam's failure because of this covenant with Adam. Okay any comment or question about that? Yes Barry? In this view, probably not. In this view, Adam was the representative. It all depended on what he did. Okay. Now in the other view, that question could probably be left open to go either way. And it's mostly basically conjecture. It's hard to figure what would have happened. Yeah. Randall? He just wonderful. You guys are thinking just like, okay. Anyone else? Question? Come in. Exactly. Okay. Let me pursue this a little bit more. The representative headship view has a close relationship to what's called covenant theology. And I want to explain that just a little bit. There are two major theological camps or views of how to view sin, salvation, and other things that kind of go along with it like the church and prophecy and so forth. One of them is covenant theology. The other is dispensational theology. Okay or dispensationalism. Covenant theology basically teaches that God has dealt with man through three covenants. And this explains everything that's happened in the universe. Three covenants. The first covenant is with Adam. And it is called a covenant of works. If Adam is obedient to God, he will live eternally. Okay. If he sins, if he fails, then he dies. But if he's obedient to God, he lives forever. That's the covenant of works with Adam. The second covenant that covenant theologians teach is the covenant of redemption. And what they mean by that is that is an eternal agreement between the Trinity, the father and the son specifically concerning the salvation of man. In eternity past, God and the son, God the father and God the son made a covenant with each other regarding how the plan of redemption would be carried out. So that's the second covenant. The third covenant is called the covenant of grace. The covenant of grace is made by God with man wherein Christ offers salvation to any who believe. So there's a covenant with Adam, covenant of works, covenant of redemption which God, the father and God the son made with each other in eternity past to provide for man's salvation. And then the covenant of grace, which God made with man whereby if we trust Christ the Savior will be saved. There's a lot of truth in that obviously. I'm not saying this is all out the lunch, but the problem with covenant theology is basically this. This covenant of grace that is made with man goes all the way back to the beginning and basically sees very little if any difference between Israel and the church. So basically the church inherits the promises made to Israel because there's only one covenant made of grace with all mankind. So everything is the same from the earliest of Old Testament saints who were saved all the way through the church. Well that leads to some major problems, especially with Old Testament prophecies which indicate that there are promises made to Israel which God says are binding and eternal and are not transferable. So they will be fulfilled by Israel. And so for that reason there are other theologians who have said we don't think the covenant theology group really has that that quite right. So that group in which I would put myself and I think most everyone here, maybe everyone here tonight would be just because of our background kind of church we are is called dispensationalism. So basically that teaches that God has dealt with people in different ways at different times throughout biblical history and those different ways of dealing with people and those different times are called dispensations. It comes from a biblical word used in first Corinthians four which is sometimes translated a stewardship and so forth. So now there are as many as seven dispensations and some people's thinking but the three primary ones are God's relationship with his covenant people Israel under the mosaic law. God's relationship with his bride the church the bride of Christ after the day of Pentecost when the church began and then the third big one is when Christ comes back to set up his kingdom on this earth the millennium. Now there are other dispensations that are taught primarily before Abraham before the establishment of the nation of Israel but the big issue with dispensationalism is there's a difference between Israel and the church. And God made promises to Israel which have not yet been fulfilled which means Jesus will come back and set up a kingdom on this earth a literal kingdom on this earth where all of those Old Testament promises to Israel which had never been fulfilled will be fulfilled in that kingdom. And so Israel and the church are not the same they're different peoples of God that God is dealt with differently in those two specific times so that's dispensationalism it's different from covenant theology although both have some very good points about them. Okay Carolyn has got her hand up yeah that's covenant theology it's just the new name for it replacement theology basically just the new name for covenant theology and it focuses on the fact that the church replaces Israel so all the promises made to Israel which have not been fulfilled are now fulfilled through the church basically what you have to do in order to get there is you have to spiritualize a lot of those promises you can't take them literally. You can't take those Old Testament promises literally and haven't fulfilled in the church because many of them are geographical in nature have to do with the land of Israel and very specific things about a kingdom and a king out of David's line ruling and so forth and so you have to kind of spiritualize all that and I'm getting in a little too deep now the real issue between covenant theology and dispensational theology is hermeneutics the class of the world. This is being offered in e412 and that is how do you interpret the Bible? Do you interpret it literally except those passages which are clearly contextually symbolic or do you have the liberty to say well I know this was said to Israel but symbolically it means this for the church there's a real problem with biblical interpretation in covenant theology but yeah replacement theology basically just the same as the Bible. This is the new name that's kind of fancy now for covenant theology quickly Stephen I want to move on to something else here yes they were long story short or basic summary is that they were reformed in their thinking that's a whole different area that we can't get into tonight but reformed theology if you take it all the way basically is covenant it it embrives covenant theology. I'm not going to get into what reformed theology is but it the two kind of go hand in hand and and covenant theology also affects what you believe about the church it affects what you believe about prophecy obviously whether or not there's a real kingdom on the earth whether you're pre millennial Christ is going to come back set up his kingdom so he has returned as before his kingdom or your homilennial covenant theologians primarily not exclusively there's a lot of things that are going to happen. There are a few exceptions like John MacArthur who is a reformed theologian but he's pre millennial and dispensational but basically they would believe that there is no earthly kingdom the church is the kingdom they're the same. So a lot to get into here that we don't have time to do that but but this view the representative headship view is very much tied to covenant theology because of the emphasis of that covenant of works with Adam the emphasis on that. Second thing quickly is its relationship to the creationist view of the origin of the soul now this goes back to what we talked about a few weeks ago remember we talked about two views as to how we got our soul one of them was the creationist view which which teaches that each soul is created by God so there's no continuity back to Adam each soul is created at conception or some would say in the church. So in this view the creationist view of the origin soul since there is no transmission of the soul from Adam on down then obviously there's no transmission to send nature either. So you're forced to the representative headship view that God just basically declared us all sinners there's no transmission of a send nature he just declared us all sinners. The representative headship view does believe our nature is sinful I don't want to imply that but it is tied to the creationist view of the soul and we saw that that's probably not the most biblical way to view how we get our soul. The traducian view or the fact that the soul is passed down from our parents is the more biblical view and we won't go back into all that we took a long time on that. So let me close with a couple of objections to the federal headship view or the representative headship view it's not that it's it's a terrible heresy there are a lot of good Bible believing people who hold to that view but it's close tie with both covenant theology and creationism the creation of the soul leads to some problems secondly it sees Adam sin as calls. God to reckon us as sinners to treat us as sinners but the Bible seems to indicate especially Romans five that Adam sin actually made us sinners we became sinners because of Adam sin not just that we were declared sinners but we became sinners something was passed down to us Romans 5 19 for just as through the Bible. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners it's not just that they were declared or reckoned in God's side of sinners something happened to actually make us sinners we inherited a sin nature from Adam that's what it was so because of that I would lean toward the last view which we don't have time to get into tonight but I mentioned it earlier it basically focuses on the fact that we inherit the sin nature from Adam now I want to be clear here both of these views teach that Adam sin condemned us we are all as human being sinners because of Adam sin so in that sense both of them are good biblical views it's just the fine points that become a little different in the two views and I think it's more biblical to see the fact that we actually inherit the sin nature that's been passed down to every human being since the time of Adam we'll get into that and show the biblical support for it next week real quick any question before we go bill let's take bills and randall will talk with you afterwards bill yeah the simple agent view was kind of a spin off of plagias of you he himself didn't teach that but it basically said the offer to help was dependent on whether not you received it it was not automatically for everybody it was dependent on whether not you received it are you willing to let God help you and he will that was basically what he taught randall I'd love to answer your question but where our time is up and we'll have to go so let's talk about it in the lobby okay good deal okay very good let's pray father we thank you for your grace and kindness to us through Christ as we have seen we are all sinners because of what Adam did and it's not his fault in the sense that the Bible also teaches in Romans five that we've all sent and so we are no better than Adam we would have done the same thing if we were in his shoes so we are all sinners and father we thank you that you've made provision through Christ to save us from our sin thank you for the opportunity to think about these things and to try to see what your word is really saying but help us to never lose sight of the fact that that root and basically we've all sinned and you gave us Jesus as our savior to die for us to pay for our sin and I pray that we would recognize that that everyone in this room would know that they've trusted Jesus as their savior it's in his name we pray amen